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Dom Robinson reviews
Sony
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1-2
Gas, Break, Honk; Gas, Break, Honk; Gas, Gas, Gas; Honk, Honk, Honk.Yes it’s another driving game and this one has the ambition to be the PS2equivalent toCarmageddon.
The basic idea here is to race around each of the different landscapes such asForest, Snow and Desert, picking up contraband and delivering it at therequired destination, although this amounts to little more than drivingover a green block first and then through red flares posing as checkpointssecond.
At this point I’ll mention the usual that there are several cars you can driveand a number of teams, or gangs in this case, up against each other.
There are several ways to play the game :
- Smuggler’s Mission: You’re required to do as described above,starting with easy missions but they soon progress to become more difficult,especially with the rozzers on your tail and it’s easy to attract theirattention.
- Joyridin’: A practice round in which you can drive anywhere andeverywhere.
- Turf War:
There are three sub-options here :
- Crooks ‘N’ Smugglers: It’s every man for himself when you’re eachracing for the contraband, stealing it from each other and making for thecheckpoint. This leads to apparently seeing several changes of objective perlevel. One second you’re after contraband, then it changes to “opponent pickup”so you go chasing after another car, then it changes to another car if theysteal it from the one who has it, etc.The one to grab the most in the time limit, or the maximumpick-ups allowed, is the winner.
- Loot Grab: similar to the above, but with two teams going after severalpieces of loot. Again, the team to grab the most is the winner.
- Checkpoint Race: does exactly what it says on the tin.
The cars move fast enough, but the graphics are fairly sparse and certainlydo nothing to promote the PS2 and all that it’s meant to stand for.Occasionally when you crash into another car there’s plenty of clipping as thecars “merge” (!)
Sometimes the real-world physics leave a bit to be desired when your car rollsover and unrealistically rights itself. On the other hand, it’s fun to driveinto people, run them over and watch their bodies fly into the air.
The vibration feature isn’t used a great deal though. It’s mainly for crashinginto other cars and hardly ever when driving about over terrain unless youthrash about too much.
The sound? The engine revs, the horn honks and police car sirens go“Woo-woo-woo-woo!”, etc. Big woo!
Overall, if you’re going to get this, make it a rental at first. It’ll providean evening’s entertainment but that’s about it in my eyes and if you payforty notes for it, you will be disappointed.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.